Events of a Lifetime 2
by Joshua The Evil Guy
Summary: Author: Enterprise1701 D Posted with Permission. Prequel/side-story to "Events of a Lifetime", dealing with some of Dexter's online friends, who he also send costumes to. Costumes bought at "Ethans" in Sunnydale.
1. Prologue

The Events of a Lifetime – part 2

By Enterprise1701_d

**Prologue**

"Well, young man," the proprietor of the costume shop known as _Ethan's_ said, "You certainly have a big and... varied collection there."

Dexter smiled back. "I've met a couple of friends over the Internet, and I want to surprise them."

The shop owner nodded. "In any case, such a large collection requires an incentive. How does a 25% discount sound?"

"That sounds great!" Dexter replied, smiling happily. Unable to believe his good luck, he eagerly accepted the strange proprietor's method of practically giving his costumes away. And now, thanks to that method, he would barely have to spend any money!

Five minutes later, he left the shop, repeatedly coming back to fill his father's car with the dozen or so outfits he had just bought. All the while, he was grinning to himself... his friends would be so surprised when they got these!

An hour or so later, Dexter stopped at the Sunnydale UPS. In the trunk, and in the backseat, were a dozen boxes, all neatly tied and labeled. Again, it took him a good five minutes to move his load inside.

As Dexter drove home, he grumbled to himself. "Bloody UPS was more expensive than the bloody costumes!"

TBC...

Author's Notes: Sorry about the unusually uber-short beginning folks! This is sort of a side-prequel to my VERY Good Friend, Enterprise1701_d's first contribution to the Chaotic Circumstances Universe "_Events of a Lifetime_" dealing with a few of Dexter's other friends, plus a whole new character that is entirely unique. Unfortunately... due to RL circumstances, which is often chaotic enough all on its own, _Events of a Lifetime2_ here is not fully complete just yet, but it is very close to being finished. So, to start with, the Prologue and Chapter 1 are posted first and then the remaining chapters will be posted as the months progress on my usual Update days.

Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoy, and check out Enterprise1701-d 's stories while you can!


	2. Chapter 1: Guy Mann or Guyman?

**Chapter 1 – Guy Mann or Guyman?**

Barry clicked shut his favorite word processor, and reclined back in the leather chair. He felt better about himself now, as he always did after he wrote a little bit on his own story. He would never allow anyone to read it, most especially not since the story had started out as a single sheet of paper hidden in the notebook of his twelve-year-old self.

Guyman had evolved into Guy Mann over time, but the overall lines had remained the same, and it was that same mix that drew Barry to his fictional character, now just as much as it had inspired his twelve-year-old self.

Standing up, Barry sighed and walked to the door of his small room, all he could afford as a stereotypically broke college student. He snorted to himself. _Bio-engineering._ _Like I'll ever do something exciting with THAT. Face it, Self. You're a boring nerd._ He chuckled to himself as his thoughts called him 'Self'.

Deciding that some fresh air could do him good, he took his coat off the hook, and left his two-room apartment. Not two bedroom apartment... two-_room_ apartment. It had a small livingroom/kitchen/bedroom area, and a small bathroom. Just enough for one person to live in, but he couldn't exactly bring people over, now could he? He chuckled again at the curious track his ideas were taking today as he walked down the stairs and hit outside air.

Drawing in a deep breath of cool outside air, he jammed his hands in his pockets and turned to the center of Sunnydale. He could just as well see if there weren't any entertaining things out there. It was starting to grow dusk, it would be completely dark in another hour or so. Barry frowned. He didn't know why, but Sunnydale at night creeped him out. Deciding on a brisker pace so he would be back by nightfall, Barry legged away, leaving his two-room apartment, and the worries that accompanied it, behind him.

Fifteen minutes later, he was standing still. _Ethan's?_ He asked himself. _This place must be new... never heard of it._ Looking in, he could see all kinds of Halloween outfits. Chuckling to himself, he almost walked on. His trick-or-treating days were far behind him. Besides, he couldn't afford a Halloween costume even if it were free.

One step he took, and then his eyes fell on a single curious item that drew his attention. _Yellow-rimmed glasses with purple lenses. You don't see many of those,_ he chuckled to himself. Just for the heck of it, he glanced at the price. A dollar fifty. A grin spread on his features. If nothing else, they were close enough to Guy Mann's insane dress-sense, and one-and-a-half dollars was still within his budget. Barely, but it would fit.

He found himself in the shop before he had a chance to debate it with himself, and his hands had locked around a pair of the insane glasses. They had a thick yellow frame that seemed to fit him perfectly, and purplish-pink glasses that tinted the world in insane colors. He loved them already.

As he walked to the counter to pay for his little bit of insanity shopping, he decided, just for the heck of it, to browse the rest of the wares on display. If the glasses were dirt-cheap, perhaps the rest was, too.

In short order, he found himself a long, black, pseudo-leather trench coat, a t-shirt that seemed his _exact_ size, sporting horizontal black-and-white stripes, a pair of combat boots, knee-length navy-blue socks, and a pair of khaki shorts.

_Hm..._ Barry said, reaching a rack with spray paints, selecting a bright red can of spray paint along with a white one. _That takes care of the coat and the boots. Red coat, white boots. And all for under twenty-five bucks._ The proprietor, or a man who Barry guessed was the proprietor, walked up to him, smiling broadly.

"I see you have an eclectic collection there," the man said, smiling broadly.

Barry gave a nervous chuckle. Great, now he looked like an idiot. "Yeah, he-he," he managed. "For a character I once wrote a little story on... but... some thing's missing, though."

"Oh?" the man asked, sounding genuinely interested. "Perhaps I can help you. What would you be missing?" He glanced at the heap of items in Barry's hands. Coat, t-shirt, shorts, boots, spray paint. "Perhaps a hat of some kind?"

Barry's grin grew. "Exactly! That's it, exactly!" He frowned in thought just then, and broke out in a wide grin, describing to the proprietor just what it was he had in mind.

The man returned five seconds later, holding out a bright, neon-green, glow-in-the-dark _Mountain Dew_ cap.

"Great!" Barry exclaimed, getting excited despite himself. Putting the cap on crookedly so the flap was on his right-hand-side, pointing slantwise to the ground, he asked, "How much do I owe you for all this?"

The proprietor seemed to frown in thought for a few moments, then said, "Twelve dollars. None of those would've been sold by Halloween anyway. So, half off."

Barry couldn't believe his luck. Without comment or giving the man a chance to reconsider, he pulled out twelve dollars and jammed them in the hand of the man. "Thanks, man! I really appreciate this!" He grinned down at the eclectic outfit. For just a second, he felt a little sad that nobody would ever see him in this get-up. Then common sense took over, and he decided that remaining indoors with this eye-bleeding ensemble was a good thing, if he wanted to keep what little reputation he had.

He made it home with ten whole minutes to spare until sundown. Bolting the door behind him, he let his items drop on the table that doubled as a kitchen counter.

"Guess I get to play dress-up for Halloween," Barry said, sitting down on one of the two chairs his apartment had. One near the kitchen counter, and one padded leather chair near his computer setup.

Halloween came, a few days later. Dressing up in his Guy Mann outfit, he looked at himself in the only mirror his apartment had, the one in the small bathroom. He looked just as ridiculous as he thought he'd look. He loved it. Especially with the pinkish-purple hue to the world thanks to the glasses... everything looked new, and he couldn't resist laughing.

Suddenly, his laugh broke off midway, and his arms grabbed his chest. Pain exploded through him. Unlike anything he had ever felt before, it tore through him, and he suddenly realized he was on the ground. The sharp, burning, piercing pain was too all-inclusive, he couldn't even think about the fact that he was now on the floor, and he screwed his eyes shut. It felt as if they were going to explode out of his head if he didn't... a pain-filled gasp tore from his throat and mouth then, not even registered over the harsh thumping in his ears.

Guy opened his eyes, frowning in confusion. _Why am I on the floor?_ He asked himself, slowly standing up. _Ship, self-diagnosis._

The frown deepened. _Ship?_ _Diagnosis!_ He demanded. No answer once again.

Blinking, he pulled up his own diagnosis, and nearly fell flat on his behind. This was most definitely not good! _Dimensional misalignment, corporeal displacement, energy stocks fully depleted, Ship lost._

Guy Mann balled his right hand. Then slowly relaxed it. Well, wherever he was, whenever he was, and in whatever dimension he was, he was still Guy. Guy Mann. Even with fully depleted energy reserves, he was not someone to be taken lightly. Granted, he was in an incredibly bad situation, and that realization made him giddy with excitement. He loved excitement.

He peered at the door, and figured out how to open the deadbolt, before opening the door and walking outside. He made sure to close the door behind him, spending special attention to it, realizing these were not self-closing doors.

Once outside, he looked up, his ocular receptors... _eyes_, he corrected himself glancing at the stars. Every time he came planet-bound after spending a couple of months Ship-bound, he thought more like a computer than he thought like a human being. And Guy was human. Or he had been. Or he still was. But different. Guy grinned. _Whatever_.

Slowly, his energy stores started to fill, thanks to the starblaze. It was not much, but it was enough. He was acutely aware of the fact that atoms were already starting to divide, rebuilding Ship. A single thought went out to them, a picture of a small, single-person, faster-than-light fighter. Completing a full Ship on anything but Stellar Acquisition would be insanity.

It would still take a couple of hours before the small Ship was complete, and Guy decided to take a walk. Wherever he was in this dimension, Ship would continue to be built now that he had started the process. It would draw in its own energy, and complete the process that way, if necessary. Still, speed was of the essence, and Guy linked his own _guillaume_-generators to it.

He felt naked without Ship. Not to mention the fact that, without it, he couldn't be brought back if he were, somehow, turned into subatomic smudge. And that had happened on multiple occasions... acutely aware of the fact that one of his enemies may be lurking, Guy closed his eyes and tapped into the sensor-suite his mobile existence held. Five seconds later, he opened his eyes once more. This solar system was clear. No enemies. Humanity was the sole occupant, late twentieth century, his atomic clock told him, after his sensor suite extrapolated the correct time from the stellar positions.

Ship's construction was speeding along faster than expected. Guy frowned; he disliked it when his calculations were off. It usually meant that something was _throwing_ them off, and that meant interference of some kind.

Scanning the entire energy-carrying spectrum, Guy nearly fell flat. _What in the name of Science..._ _The amount of ambient energy in the air is astronomical! Granted, on an unusual and nearly untapped frequency, but still..._

Tapping his own generators into it, and sending the results to Ship, he noticed the time ticking down to one hour and a half. Which was survivable.

Something rushed him from behind. Guy side-stepped with just a little more speed than a regular human body could ever hope to achieve, and watched with sarcastic interest as something flashed past him. Sensors registered it as a 'human', but the creature that snapped around, growling, was most definitely _not_ a human the way Guy had become accustomed to them.

The small creature snarled, and charged him again. Guy raised one eyebrow. His hand snapped out. The creature fell as the single blow to the back of its neck knocked it out cold. Guy stared at it, a single thought bringing the full might of his mobile sensor suite into play.

Fifteen seconds later, Guy's mouth opened, and he licked his lips. Now things were starting to look interesting to the extra-dimensional traveler. Of course, he had been aware of his own status of corporeal displacement, but the very fact that there was a second being in such a state threw a whole new light on things.

_Magic,_ he scoffed to himself, hating the word even as he said it. In all his years, science had been his pillar of support, the erratic rules of magic too illogical, too alien, too different from his own logic to be anything else than feared. He had run into it on multiple occasions, and each time, the meeting had been unpleasant.

To say that Guy hated magic would be an overstatement. He had his encounters with good magic as well, after all.

Turning his mind back to the present, he ran over the sensor results a second time. Without the full abilities of Ship-based sensors, he had to rely on the reasonably limited mobile sensors in his own body. And those were telling him at this moment that this being was human, but that a second strand of DNA had been superimposed upon the regular, _homo sapiens_ DNA the creature usually had.

He glanced around, determined that he couldn't leave the creature unconscious now that he knew it was human, and carried it to a nearby ally. Hiding it behind a dumpster, he stacked a couple of empty cardboard boxes on top of it, putting it out of sight. That should keep it reasonably safe until it regained consciousness.

Guy's sensors ran wild again, trying to track the source of the magic that superimposed... Guy broke off. Magic ran in the same bandwidth as the background noise he was tapping into for his energy needs. Guy felt the urge to curse rise and fall. The same background radiation that was supplying him with a ready source of energy was now covering for the source of this blasted magic that shifted DNA... or rather, covered DNA with _other_ DNA.

Guy wished there was a way to reliably track and use magic, instead of relying on fuzzy logic the way it did. It just didn't compute.

Walking on, he tried to puzzle things out. If the human he had left in the alley had been turned into whatever kind of creature it was through this magic, it stemmed to reason that he, himself, was also a victim of this. Corporeal displacement was one thing... had he, Guy Mann, inhabited someone else's body? And if so, what had happened to that person? Guy clenched and unclenched his right fist, looking at it. His body felt as his own.

He looked in the nearest window, trying to catch his reflection. His own clothes... but that was not his own face.

Guy cursed for the first time since long.

He was inhabiting someone else's body. Someone he had just granted the full power of the _guillaume_-atoms.

The question now was... would this change be permanent?

TBC...


End file.
